


No Good Deed Goes Unrewarded

by red_special_specialist



Category: Shameless (US)
Genre: GW2020, Light Angst, M/M, Meet-Cute
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-19
Updated: 2020-07-19
Packaged: 2021-03-05 02:07:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,653
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25386553
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/red_special_specialist/pseuds/red_special_specialist
Summary: What was supposed to be a short trip to the local Walmart, turns into Mickey and Yevgeny helping a lost little girl who was separated from her family.My first entry for Gallavich Week 2020!
Relationships: Ian Gallagher/Mickey Milkovich
Comments: 47
Kudos: 246
Collections: Gallavich Week 2020





	No Good Deed Goes Unrewarded

**Author's Note:**

> Ok, so this was supposed to be posted earlier this morning, but things came up. It's here now though!

It was supposed to be an in and out thing, five minutes tops, or at least that’s what Mickey thought when he and Yevgeny stopped by their local Walmart after a certain highly anticipated package had been delivered to Mickey, and he realized he was out of batteries. It was supposed to be an easy trip, but as anyone in Chicago will tell you, doing anything on a Friday afternoon was a fool’s errand.

So, Mickey found himself stuck in traffic, scrambling to find a parking space, and almost getting hit by some asshole who wasn’t looking where he was going, and all the while he was being bugged by his nosy seven-year-old, asking why they needed to go to the store, and what was so important about that box, that Yevgeny wasn’t allowed to open it or touch it.

By the time Mickey walked through the sliding double doors of America’s version of hell on earth, he was already close to losing his shit. He kept his calm, however, and to keep his son from asking questions about what was in the mysterious package, Mickey had promised him a toy if he behaved well.

Now, Mickey was here, batteries in hand, as he stood in front of the tiny selection of lube, looking over them carefully, deciding on what he wanted. There wasn’t much to choose from, and if he were honest with himself he’d rather just swing by the mall and grab something from Spencer’s Gifts, but considering how traffic was, and the fact he just wanted to go back home and make dinner, his options would remain limited to the basic mediocre shit Walmart had to offer.

With a sigh, Mickey just picked up the cheapest bottle they had. He couldn’t waste too much time picking out lube, since Yevgeny would be looking for him any minute. Good. It would save him time trying to find him, and then they could hurry up and get home. Yevgeny would be distracted by his toy until his mom came to pick him up for the weekend, and then Mickey would finally be alone to play with _his_ new toy.

He knew the toy aisle wouldn’t distract his son forever, and he was right, when he heard the sound of Yevgeny’s voice getting closer and calling out his name. Mickey turned away from the shelf to look over at his son, but then stopped in his tracks when he saw Yevgeny wasn’t the only person standing in front of him. Next to Yevgeny was a little girl with fiery red hair, crying and holding onto Yevgeny’s hand for dear life. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out the situation. Yevgeny either found a little girl who lost her parents, or this was another long-lost kid of his, showing up in front of him, three years after a stupid drunken night with a hooker. Either way, this threw a wrench in Mickey’s plan of getting the fuck out of Walmart and going home as quickly as possible.

“Hey, Yev,” Mickey said, eyeing the two children up and down, “What’cha got there?”

Yevgeny looked to the action figure in his hand, before looking back up at his dad, “A toy.”

Mickey mentally face palmed himself, “No, I’m talking about the girl, Yevgeny, obviously.”

“Oh, yeah,” he said, as if he’d just remembered the crying little girl that was holding onto his hand, “This is Franny.”

“Ok?”

“She lost her parents, and I told her I’d help.”

Mickey figured that was the case. He crouched down to Franny’s level, “Hey, kid. You lose your folks?”

Franny just continued to cry and nodded her head, “I want Ian.”

Mickey looked to his son with a raised eyebrow.

Yevgeny shrugged, “That’s all she’ll say. I asked her if she was lost, and if her parents were around, and what they looked like, but all she says is that she wants someone named Ian.”

Well, that didn’t help, that could have been anybody. That could have been a parent, or a brother, or even an imaginary friend. Mickey definitely didn’t have time for this, but the girl _did_ look scared, and Mickey would be an asshole if he just left her here. Besides, whoever Ian was, he was probably missing her too.

“I want Ian!” Franny sobbed again, bringing Mickey out of his thoughts.

He sighed in frustration, “Ok, here’s what we’re going to do. We’ll take her up to one of the registers and they’ll call someone over the loudspeaker to come and get her.” Mickey stood up, and crossed his arms, “Should’a done that in the first place.”

Yevgeny rolled his eyes, “I didn’t know. I’ll remember for the next one though.”

Next one? How many kids were lost in this Walmart? Mickey wondered, as he, Yevgeny, and Franny made their way to the checkout lines. Mickey found an empty one, which was a rarity in Walmart on a Friday afternoon. He walked up to the person running the register, and said, “Hey, found this lost kid.”

The cashier, who was young, but looked dead inside, just gave Mickey an unimpressed look, “Ok?”

“You wanna call for her parents over the loudspeaker?”

The kid sighed, “Yeah, sure, I guess.”

“Great, thanks for the quick sense of urgency,” Mickey snarked.

“Wanna give me the kid’s name? I kinda need that information.”

“Her name if Franny, and she’s looking for someone named Ian,” Yevgeny piped up.

The cashier nodded and picked up the phone, a voice suddenly boomed out over the intercom, “Attention Walmart shoppers, if Ian would come to register four, Franny is here waiting for you.”

“Wow,” Yevgeny said, mesmerized with the phone, “I wanna talk over the loudspeaker. I wanna work at Walmart.”

“No, you don’t,” both Mickey and the cashier said in unison. Mickey had once worked in retail, after getting out of juvie. It took five days for both Mickey and the police to see that Mickey wasn’t really a people’s person.

A couple minutes passed, and Mickey was starting to think that ‘Ian’ wasn’t the one that brought her to the store. Or, even worse, maybe he was but forgot Franny was here and left.

“Holy shit, Franny,” said a sudden unfamiliar voice.

Mickey turned to see a guy jogging up to them with his cart, and ‘holy shit’ was right. Mickey didn’t mean to stare at the boy coming up to them, but it was kinda hard when the guy looked like _that_. He had fiery red hair and freckles, like Franny did. His eyes were a rich emerald green, and his body looked like it was sculpted out of marble.

“Ian!” Franny cried out, ripping her hand free and running up to the man, who’d knelt down to accept the hug she almost knocked him down with.

Ian stood as he scooped the little girl up, and kissed her on the head, “Don’t ever scare me like that again, Fran, I thought I’d lost you.”

“Ok, Uncle Ian,” she mumbled, burying her head into his neck.

He pushed his cart up to the register, “Thanks for finding her,” he said to the cashier.

“Wasn’t me,” the cashier said, “those two brought her here.”

Ian turned his attention to Mickey and Yevgeny, “Then it’s you two I have to thank,” he grinned, “Y’know, you turn around for two seconds and they’ll just up and disappear on you. I thought she was behind me the whole time, but I guess not. Where’d you find her?”

Mickey, who’d been staring at Ian’s chest and arms the entire time, looked up into the other boy’s kind eyes, “My son found her crying in the toy aisle. She’d been crying for you.”

Mickey hadn’t intended to make it sound like Ian’s fault, but it was obvious that was how the other boy took it, when he saw Ian lower his eyes in shame. He looked like he was about to cry.

“I should have been keepin’ a better eye on her. I- I don’t really know what I’m doing here,” he admitted, holding onto the little girl tighter, “Franny’s mom, my sister, got sent to jail a couple months back, so I’ve been the one watching her.”

“I’m sorry,” Mickey said, not really knowing what else to say. He understood how hard it was when a parent was in jail. It must have been really hard for Franny, who looked to be about four or five.

Ian shook his head, “Nah, it’s fine. We’re learning as we go, right, Franny?”

Franny lifted her head to nod at him, “I miss mommy,” she said with watery eyes.

“I know you do,” he said, his voice breaking a bit, “But we’re gonna visit her tomorrow, ok?”

This was fucking heart breaking. Mickey felt like this little reunion between Ian and Franny was private and he shouldn’t be watching.

The cashier, however, didn’t feel as empathetic, when he just said, “Are either of you going to check out? because there are people behind you.”

Mickey glared at the kid, because didn’t this asshole know how to read the room?

Ian looked back at the line starting to form, and he said, “Yeah, sorry. I am.”

Mickey stood back as Ian started unloading his cart. He didn’t have a lot. Just a box of mac and cheese, bread, milk, eggs, deli meat, and a case of water. Mickey felt like his work here was done and was ready to grab Yevgeny and head to self-checkout when Ian turned to him.

“Uh, I just want to say thanks again. There aren’t a lot of good people in this world, I’m glad my niece came across someone who was.”

“No problem. I get it though. It’s gotta be tough watching her by yourself, especially when she’s not your kid.”

“She makes it easier on me, Franny’s a great kid. Besides, I’m not completely alone. I live with my younger brothers. One of them is eighteen and the other one’s ten. They help when they can, but the eighteen-year-old works and the ten-year-old is focused on school. I have another sister and another brother, both older, but they live out of state. They offered to come back down and help out, but my sister is busy with her job and my brother’s wife just had a baby, and I didn’t want to drag them back down here, because they have their own shit to deal with, and I know they’ll drop everything to come back and help.”

“You don’t have friends that can help. Maybe a girlfriend?” Mickey asked, because he had to. Maybe the revelation of this guy being straight, would stop all the unrealistic gay thoughts running through Mickey’s mind.

Ian laughed a bit, “Nah, no girlfriend.”

“What, too busy?”

“Nope, too gay.”

_‘Well shit,’_ Mickey thought. That wasn’t what Ian was supposed to say. He was supposed to say, ‘sorry, Mickey, I’m straight, so please stop thinking about me fucking you in about ten different ways, while you stand here in the middle of a crowded Walmart’.

“That’ll be seventeen dollars and twenty-four cents,” the cashier interrupted.

“Right, I got coupons,” Ian said, taking out his wallet. However, he stopped, and a worried look came over his face.

“What’s wrong, Ian?” Franny asked, looking to her uncle with big eyes.

Mickey heard Ian mutter something under his breath, something about killing some guy named Carl.

Ian laughed nervously, looking up at the cashier, “I guess my brother forgot to put them in my wallet, before he left for work.”

“So, you don’t have the money to pay for this?”

“I mean, I have like ten bucks on me,” he admitted.

Mickey shook his head. He couldn’t watch this poor guy go through this. It must have already been a shit day for him, considering his sister was in jail, and he thought he almost lost his niece, “Here,” Mickey said, “I got it.”

Ian looked back at him in surprise, “What? You don’t have to-”

“Trust me, man. I get it.”

Ian was hesitant, but then finally moved out of the way to let Mickey pay, “Thanks, uh-”

“Mickey,” he said, realizing he never gave Ian his name.

“Thanks, Mickey. I’m Ian.”

“I’m Yevgeny,” Yevgeny said, smiling up at Ian.

Ian smiled back, and put out his fist for a fist bump, “Hey, Yevgeny. Cool name, man.”

“Thanks. Oh, wait!” Yevgeny tugged on Mickey’s shirt, “Dad, we gotta pay for our stuff too.”

Mickey watched as his son handed his toy to the cashier, and then watched as the cashier looked up at him expectantly. Mickey felt panic shoot through him, because he just remembered the whole reason for the trip, and the reason why he was originally going to go through self-checkout. Yet, none of that mattered anymore, because now everyone was waiting for Mickey to hurry the fuck up, pay, and then leave. With a sigh, Mickey thought, ‘ _fuck It’_ , and tossed the bottle of lube and batteries on the conveyor belt. Mickey then looked to the unimpressed cashier, ringing it up, and then to Ian, who just watched with raised eyebrows, and maybe Mickey was crazy, but also a hint of a smile.

“Is that for your package, dad?” Yevgeny asked loudly. He turned to Ian, “Daddy got a new toy in the mail and I’m not allowed to play with it. He won’t even let me open the box,” he complained.

Ian gave a startled laugh, while a woman behind them scoffed in disgust.

Mickey turned around and flipped the old woman off. Like she would know anything about Mickey. The bitch was probably jealous, since she looked like she hadn’t had an orgasm since the Nixon administration. Without another word to anyone, Mickey gave the cashier the money, collected his change, grabbed his shit, took Yevgeny’s hand, and then booked it out of Walmart.

He just made it out of the double doors when Mickey heard a voice behind him.

“Hey, Mickey, wait up!”

Mickey turned to see Ian, jogging up to him, with Franny now sitting in the cart.

“What now?” he groaned, just wanting to go home. He completely embarrassed himself in front of the guy, why is Ian adding insult to injury?

“You forgot your receipt,” Ian said, smiling at him with a goofy grin that made Mickey’s knees go weak.

“Thanks,” Mickey said, snatching it from Ian, ready to take off for his car, but something stopped him. On the back of the receipt, scrawled hastily, was a phone number, “What’s this?” he asked dumbly.

Ian blushed, “Uh, it’s my phone number. Text me sometime, so I can pay you back for the groceries.”

Mickey scoffed, “You don’t need to worry about paying me back, Firecrotch.”

“Oh, well keep my number anyway.”

Mickey felt the heat rise up in his neck and in his cheeks, when he said, “Ok.”

“Ok,” Ian grinned, but leaned in close to Mickey, so only he could hear, “Call me when those batteries run out. I can save you a trip to the store.”

Mickey felt a hitch in his breath as Ian pulled away, “Uh, yeah. I’ll definitely do that.”

“Good,” Ian laughed, “Bye, Mickey. Bye Yevgeny,” he said, before pushing his cart away.

Mickey stood there a moment, just staring at the number. He couldn’t believe his luck, that a hot, gay, ginger gave him his number, and even wanted to fuck him. Mickey suddenly didn’t feel so annoyed about going to the store anymore.

“Dad,” Yevgeny said, snapping Mickey back to reality, “Did you make a new friend?”

Mickey glanced at the paper again. He thought about Ian, and what the ten-digit number on the back of the receipt could mean for him, for them. Mickey looked back at his son with a smile and said, “Yeah, I think I did.”


End file.
